Riff Of The Week: Latter-era Sabbath Edition

Last week we visited the land of the long white cloud and battled it out with a few killer kiwi riffs for our New Zealand Edition. A choice cut from Ulcerate‘s underappreciated album Vermis stomped home in its size 14 jandals with a little over 50% of the vote.

This week we lifted the NO SABBATH rule and asked for post-1984Black Sabbath riffs. Here’s what you sent in…

tigeraid
Riff @ 0:34 in ‘I’ from Dehumanizer [1992]

JWEG
Riff @ 0:00 in ‘Hard Life To Love’ from The Eternal Idol [1987]

Tuesday already? Every time I went to YouTube to pick a tune for ROTW, I’d get entirely lost in replaying the entirety of Eternal Idol & Headless Cross, so I’d better just get this in before the whole week vanishes.

As much as I wanted to submit one of several tunes from Headless Cross given it’s my fave Tony Martin Sabbath album (yes, I’ve tried to get ‘Nightwing’ past the normal NO SABBATH rule at least once) Eternal Idol is clearly the masterclass in Later Era Sabbath RIFFS.
And on that note, I keep coming back to the riff that opens this tune and drives through its whole run. So it’s a keeper:

Hans
Riff @ 0:23 in ‘Master of Insanity’ from Dehumanizer [1992]

I’m almost certain this album was my first exposure to Black Sabbath. My brother had the CD and I loved the cover art, but never really got into the music. It did strike me as pretty dark even then, though, and it’s the reason I always associated Sabbath more with Dio than Ozzy. Anyway, still can’t claim I’m in love with this, but it’s doing okay on the riff front, and this is a particularly interesting one. Start at 0:14 for the awesome bass guitar version of it.

Lacertilian
Riff @ 0:00 in ‘Evil Eye’ from Cross Purposes [1994]

Seeing as though we’ve already got a couple from Dehumanizer, I’ll bench that riff from DOOM 2 ‘After All (The Dead)’, and go with an Iommi special from Cross Purposes.

Basking in the radiant heat of Terra australis for millennia has instilled a rage within this reptile that cannot be quelled by conventional means, he requires metal to maintain sanity.
Also, some suncream wouldn't go astray.